Friends or Foes? Berlin Must Protect Germans from US Spying

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http://www.spiegel.de/international/world/why-nsa-spying-program-must-be-independently-investigated-a-908726.html

Germany Chancellor Angela Merkel finally got around to commenting on Monday, two days after SPIEGEL reported that the NSA has been storing and evaluating data from around half a billion communications connections in Germany each month. Her reaction, to be sure, was harsh. "The monitoring of friends -- this is unacceptable. It can't be tolerated. We're no longer in the Cold War," she said through her spokesman Steffen Seibert.

But the dimensions of US data surveillance -- and the fact that much of that data was collected in Europe -- have been generally known for weeks, as a result of documents made public by Edward Snowden. Yet when US President Barack Obama visited Berlin in June, the Chancellor merely asked a few polite questions. That was it.

German Interior Minister Hans-Peter Friedrich also appeared to be trying to make up for lost time on Monday, demanding an apology from the US in an interview with the newsmagazine Focus. "If the reports are confirmed, it would be a burden on the trust between the EU and the US."

It took awhile for the full dimensions of Snowden's allegations to sink in with Germany's politicians. And yet Snowden himself uttered the key allegation three weeks ago. "Any NSA analyst at any time can target anyone," he said, "from a federal judge to the president." All that's needed is an email address. Thanks to Snowden, Germans now know that this happens on a vast scale, even in their own country.